1928: The rise of giant merchants

Ming Lou is indeed a professional spy. It took him just over a month to successfully infiltrate the Japanese Consulate General in Shanghai. He was not only highly regarded by Iwai Eiichi, but also met and made friends with Okamoto Jusan.

The financial strength of the Ming family is second only to the Feng family in the French Concession. Now the Japanese have successfully absorbed both Feng Jingyao and Ming Lou into their camp. The Chinese business circle in the French Concession seems to have become their backyard all of a sudden.

The extraordinary ability shown by Ming Lou and the convenience of his position as the Finance Department in the City Hall made Iwai Eiichi readily agree to his request to join the Intelligence Department.

Of course, to become a qualified Japanese puppet, you still need to be reviewed and inspected by the Japanese military, otherwise you, an outsider, will never be allowed to contact the core intelligence center.

Ye Luo is not worried about this at all.

Ming Lou can deal with the underground organization, the Jinling National Government, the Jiangcheng National Government, and the underworld gangs at the same time, which already reflects his talent in this regard.

While Ming Lou was trying to find ways to get into the Hongkou Dojo, Ye Luo lowered the purchase price by nearly 1 million yuan, directly from 4 million to 3 million.

From the initial 5 million to the inexplicable loss of 2 million now, Okamoto Jusan was more anxious than anyone else, so he accelerated the transfer of confidential information of the Hongkou Dojo and began to think about resisting the orders of the Japanese military.

On the other hand, Ming Tai, who was favored by Dai Li, was intercepted by Ye Luo's people before he went to the secret service department.

Dai Li was so angry that he finally dug up a good seedling from Shanghai, but he was robbed by someone, and he couldn't beat the guy who robbed him!

Starting from the middle of this year, the principal obviously valued him and Huang Jie, the newly rising confidants, and became a little alienated from Chen Guofu brothers, Kong Xiangxi, Song Ziwen and other old subordinates. This made Dai Li feel an opportunity and was more eager to show off in front of the principal.

At the end of July, the principal personally approved him to formally establish the Renaissance Society, merging the current Shanghai Special Agent Office and Dai Li's other special agents scattered across the country. The principal was appointed as the president of the Renaissance Society, and Dai Li was appointed as the vice president.

This was equivalent to instantly radiating his power from Jinling and Shanghai to the whole country. Although his position did not change, his power was increased by an order of magnitude.

At the same time, the "Party Affairs Investigation Section" under the Chen Guofu brothers, which was responsible for the internal intelligence investigation of the Kuomintang, and the "Second Department of the General Staff Headquarters" responsible for the internal investigation of the military system were also officially expanded to the "Special Agent Headquarters".

The two brothers hated Dai Li very much and felt that he shared their power. Therefore, wherever the Renaissance Society expanded, they followed it and bit it tightly like a maggot on the heel.

During this period, Ye Luo was quite free. After returning to Shanghai, he remotely directed the development of Ye's investment, his wife and children were warm and comfortable, and he took care of the pregnant Meng Xiaodong by the way. They were very happy.

Taking advantage of the Japanese evacuation of Shanghai, everything returned to normal heat, Ye Luo did not stop making money and started to make trouble.

Ye's Film Company, which had been silent for more than half a year, joined Ye's Newspaper Industry and asked major newspapers and magazines to launch a selection activity for "Movie Queen", "Shanghai Dancing Queen", and "Republic of China Song Queen".

His original intention was to seamlessly bring out new pillars when Hu Die and Ruan Lingyu, the two main pillars of the stage, became his women and retired behind the scenes.

However, after the major newspapers and magazines launched the activities, Hu Die, who had not filmed for a long time, topped the list with more than 20,000 votes and became the unrivaled movie queen. Ruan Lingyu followed closely behind with more than 18,000 votes, and the third was Chen Yumei, who was newly signed by Lin Ruxian.

She was also the new pillar that Ye Luo and Lin Ruxian spent resources to make famous.

The matter of Chen Yumei is also quite funny.

In the original history, Shaw Brothers' Tianyi Film Company became popular in Shanghai in these years, and Chen Yumei, who was originally the pillar of Tianyi Film Company, would marry Shao Zuiweng in 1934 and change from an actress to the boss's wife.

However, there are unexpected events. Since the establishment of Ye's Film Company, it has successively defeated the three leading companies, Tianyi, Lianhua, and Mingxing, and then entered Hollywood and became famous overseas.

Since 1929, Ye's Film Company has started to make sound films, which is another dimensionality reduction attack and completely occupied the film market of the Republic of China.

Shaw Brothers fled to Hong Kong, and Chen Yumei, a popular female star in Shanghai, naturally would not follow them. She, 22 years old this year, fell into Ye Luo's palm.

At this time, Chen Yumei's reputation was already very big. She made nearly 30 movies in the past three years, and her face was on the screen more quickly than Hu Die and Ruan Lingyu combined.

But Ye Luo just clapped his hands, and she smiled and came up, wishing she could get there in one step and climb directly onto the bed of the second young master.

Chen Yumei's ability is very good, at least she can be ranked in the top five in the entertainment circle of the Republic of China, but this wave of selection activities has made her the most ridiculous supporting role.

In the selection of the queen of dance, the former black cat dancers almost occupied the top ten of the list, and Wang Ji topped the list with the title of "Black Cat Queen of Dance", with a cliff-like 12,000 votes, leading the second place by 5,000 votes!

Wang Ji is still the top of the list of the queen of singing. There is no way. The song "Night Jasmine" tailored for her by Ye Luo is too popular. All dance halls play it every day. It is estimated that no one in Shanghai has not heard it.

If you want to break this record, I'm afraid that Zhou Xuan, Ye Luo's new adopted sister, will have to come.

Zhou Xuan was the biggest dark horse in this selection. She was only twelve years old, but she stood out from a bunch of female singers and squeezed into the top ten of the list.

It was a pleasant surprise.

After the lively selection, Ye's Investment naturally awarded trophies and bonuses to the selected female stars, expanded publicity, and then spent money to sign all these women and let them be their cash cows.

As we all know, even during the Anti-Japanese War, Shanghai became an "isolated island", and the concession area was still prosperous and peaceful, even more so than now.

So Ye Luo would keep the entertainment industry here to continue making money, and only consider moving other industries, especially industry, to other places.

As August approached, the weather became extremely hot, and Ye's Film Company took the opportunity to launch a "swimsuit photo" collection activity, taking advantage of the fact that the Republic of China was desperately learning Western culture, to popularize women's liberation.

This will be conducive to the development of entertainment industries such as film and television and advertising.

In this way, Ye Luo plunged into the entertainment industry throughout the summer, wishing to monopolize the entertainment industry in the south.

Just when he was considering whether to directly introduce some Hollywood blockbusters into the domestic market, Ming Lou finally received good news! (End of this chapter)